Helios

Contents

The Helios is a publication of the Total War Center forums reporting on the various non-TW related activities of the forums, though in the past it has carried advertisements for the TWC:University. The publication is also characterised by being TWC's second oldest publication, first having been brought out December 2005 [1], and by being one of the most broken-up in terms of its publication history, having taken several hiatuses and gone through a long series of editors. It is currently released every two months.

In fact, the editorial history alone is worthy of note due to the great names involved; begun by imb39, Kscott and Grimsta, it then fell to Grimsta alone to edit the Helios. After a period a hiatus begun, sparked off by the Helios Political Issue (outlined below) and when it restarted, King Henry V was editing it. After a happy period as editor, bringing in a variety of innovations in style, he resigned in favour of Saint-Germain. However, on the retirement of Saint-Germain, the Helios fell into abeyance with no replacement editor until Justinian, during his long period as Republican Consul, restarted it and added innovations of his own, including the contents (a forerunner of that in use in the present Helios), before finally stepping aside in favour of Tom Paine, who it on to Scorch who in turn passed the reigns to The Sundance Kid. In late December 2008, The Sundance Kid opted to stand down from his post due to increasing workload and diminishing online activity. There were some doubts as to who would succeed him, until his deputy, Freddie, ascended to the position of editor and remained there for quite some time until again, the curse of real life took its toll on one of TWC's Greatest Brits. Astaroth followed as Head Editor of the Helios.

The Helios style has changed greatly; the original Helioi were written by the editors alone, and got very involved in politics. This ended with the Helios Political Issue, and since then the Helios has not only been less involved in politics but has also hired reporters in order to put in an extra layer of protection, a practice continued to this day. After the Sundance Kid, the Helios became more neutral in focus, with nearly half the articles based on Real Life and the other half on TWC, yet by the end of Astaroth's term as editor, the TWC-related aspect of the publication declined - due to a lack of relevant content in the form of online events - yet the professionalism of the writing had increased. Jom's term saw a continuation of this process and the finalization of the gradual process of removing the TWC-side from Helios, replaced instead with high-calibre academic articles on history and culture. While this trend saw an increase in the overall quality of the articles published, it also saw something of a decline in readership and feedback. Lord Rahl initiated a small scale expansion which aimed to grant the publication a wider reader base and bring it closer to the TWC community, whilst maintaining its academic core. Due to inconsistent input from writers he also established a bi-monthly publication rate to ensure that issues are complete.

The current series of Helios has so far run for 70 issues. Releases were, previously, nominally fortnightly, but usually late; they were monthly, for a time - also usually late. Afterwards they occur once every two-months, and now they are published as soon as an issue is compiled. Archives for the oldest issues can be found here.

GrimSta's political Helios edition was written in January 2006. It was an article featuring an interview with Belisarius which included a large attack on Simetrical. Simetrical posted a reply, and things soon escalated as a group of members led by Belisarius pushed for Simetrical's resignation from staff and as Pro-Curator. This failed as most Citizens voted in support of Simetrical. Some now believe the whole incident was started by Belisarius for his own ends.